SAM MASTERFUL ON THEO’S NIGHT

NEWS Friday 20th March 2015, 11:02pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The best race of the night was the Grand Final, and home fans were delighted to see Sam Masters take up where he left off last season by winning all his races, culminating in a brilliant victory from the back over Kevin Doolan to take the top prize.

That was a four lap thriller, and there were other races worth watching as the riders put on a decent show for Testimonial man Theo Pijper. Thank goodness they did, because it was almost a disastrous night – the ambulance was 45 minutes late in turning up after mixing up the dates. The crowd can’t have been happy of course, no-one was, but they waited patiently as speedway crowds do.

It was a varied field and there were several performances worth talking about. Masters was the maestro, but Aaron Summers will have encouraged the Glasgow contingent with a sparkling show to score 11 in the qualifiers and take third in the final.

Doolan was entertaining as he always is at Armadale, and he even did an extra race! To everyone’s surprise he came out a race early, riding in heat 10 by mistake and then wasting no time turning out for heat 11 which was the one he was supposed to be in.

Theo Pijper also made the final when Kenneth Hansen hit machine problems, just scraping in ahead of Ben Barker by virtue of beating the Bandit in heat 9.

From a Monarchs’ viewpoint, Rob Branford started slowly but rode very well in his last two, while Kevin Wolbert started with a win before fading. He will have his new engines in time for the first home match.

Of the newcomers, Nike Lunna and Rene Deddens in particular had their moments. There were a couple of tumbles but the damage for Konopka and Vissing was to machine rather than man.

The youngsters went well too, with the first pass of the night coming from Stene Pijper and World 125cc Champion Kyle Bickley living up to his billing.

24 races were staged in spite of the ambulance problem. After that very worrying delay, it was an excellent night for Theo, as we all hoped it would be.

QUALIFYING SCORES: Sam Masters 12, Aaron Summers 11, Kevin Doolan 9, Kenneth Hansen 8, Theo Pijper 8, Ben Barker 8, Claus Vissing 7, Nike Lunna 6, Thomas Jorgensen 6, Rusty Harrison 5, Rob Branford 4, Kevin Wolbert 4, Rene Deddens 4, Henk Koonstra 2, Matic Voldrih 1, Rafal Konopka 0, Ryan MacDonald (res.) 0.

Final: Masters, Doolan, Summers, Pijper.